Bank Of America Government Travel Card

Markman: Blame the Banks

Breadth across the three major exchanges has turned heavily negative in the past few weeks, and now new lows are consistently outpacing new highs by a factor of three to one. 

There have been some new highs for a handful of consumer staples makers like Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL ), but it’s the new lows that are really interesting. Take a peek every now and then, and you will see what wholesale destruction is occurring to some of the biggest and formerly most respected companies in the country.

Take  Bank of America  (NYSE: BAC ) — please! No really, wow — butchered does not even begin to describe what has happened to this company.

In the mid-2000s, as low interest rates sent Americans on a home-buying spree, BAC went on an acquisition spree of its own, buying FleetBoston for $47 billion, credit card goliath MBNA for $35 billion, U.S. Trust for $3.3 billion, LaSalle Bank of Chicago for $21 billion, troubled mortgage originator Countrywide Financial for $4.1 billion and near-collapse Merrill Lynch at the height of the financial crisis for $50 billion.

Try to add that up, and even a polydactyl will run out of fingers and toes. That is one whopping huge company, bigger than big, ungodly huge, immensely — well, you get the picture. Who could possibly run a business that size profitably? The answer, quite obviously, is nobody, because this is company is one sick puppy. The race to get bigger has absolutely destroyed value over the past five years to an extent that is simply mind-blowing.

And after all those buyouts, all that private jet travel, all the high salaries paid, the company had the audacity to take a $45 billion bailout from the federal government. And then after all that, it has had the opportunity to borrow at less than zero and shore up its balance sheet by buying bonds and sucking down the interest rates, essentially for free.

And after all of that, what? Nothing but further value destruction, broken promises, carelessness and poverty. If you want a poster child for what was wrong with the buyout spree permitted by the Federal Reserve in the 2000s, and what is wrong with growth at all costs, then Bank of America is your company.

SecureIDNews | U.S. Bank to launch America's first dual interface ...

U.S. Bank, together with Visa and Oberthur Technologies, has announced the release of a new dual interface payment card combining Visa PayWave contactless technology, EMV chip and magnetic stripe.

Designed to be compatible with all credit cards systems around the world, the U.S. Bank FlexPerks Travel Rewards Visa credit card will be the first dual interface EMV card introduced in America, says U.S. bank.

As the global standard for credit and debit payment cards based on chip card technology, EMV is currently used by over one billion customers outside of the U.S., according to U.S. Bank.

Manufactured and personalized by Oberthur, the new cards will be introduced to more than 20,000 U.S. Bank FlexPerks Visa cardholders this month, with plans to expand the offering to other travel reward cardholders in the coming year.

Travel cards control weaknesses leave Navy vulnerable to fraud and abuse

Travel cards control weaknesses leave Navy vulnerable to fraud and abuse : report to congressional requesters.

Travel cards, control weaknesses leave Army vulnerable to potential fraud and abuse : report to congressional requesters

Congressional Record, V. 148, Pt. 3, March 11, 2002 to April 10, 2002

Premium Class Travel: Internal Control Weaknesses Governmentwide Led to Improper and Abusive Use of Premium Class Travel